This article is a continuation of Articles 229-230, about scientific experiments and studies conducted to confirm an after-death experience. This after-death experience always involves reincarnation until a certain level of evolution of consciousness is reached. This may be reincarnation within a cycle, or the finishing of one cycle and the movement to the next.

Existence moves as spirals within spirals – “ever-spiraling states of consciousness”.

Additional Research and Experience of Reincarnation

We discussed Dr. Joel Whitton in Article 230.

Dr. Joel Whitton was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto Medical School.

He worked to gather evidence of reincarnation.

When individuals are hypnotized they often remember what appear to be memories of previous existences.

All reported gender was not specific to the soul.

All reported the purpose of life was to evolve and learn, and that multiple existences facilitated this process.

When he regressed subjects to the realm between lives they experienced a dazzling, light-filled realm where there was no such thing as time or space as we know it.

“Part of the purpose of this realm was to allow them to plan their next life, to literally sketch out the important events and circumstances that would befall them in the future.”1

Dr. Whitton found that when subjects were in this realm, “they entered an unusual state of consciousness in which they were acutely self-aware and had a heightened moral and ethical sense. In addition, they no longer possessed the ability to rationalize away any of their faults and misdeeds, and saw themselves with total honesty. Thus, when subjects planned their next life, they did so with a sense of moral obligation.”

Dr. Whitton continues, “The message of metaconsciousness [the in-between lives] is that the life situation of every human being is neither random nor inappropriate. Seen objectively from the interlife, every human experience is simply another lesson in the cosmic classroom.”

Dr. Whitton found the “interlife” or the life between lives, to be divided into four stages:

Stage One: Transition after Death

“Just about everybody speaks of passing through a tunnel and emerging into a blinding light. Some report splendid palaces and beautiful gardens. Far from being sad or frightened, the dead are engulfed with happiness and love.”

Stage Two: Court of Judgment

“Without exception, people speak of appearing before a board of judgment, consisting of three elderly wise beings. For some people, appearing before the board is sheer hell – they cannot make excuses for misdeeds or failings on Earth. They must face up to their wrongdoing. Emotional suffering they have inflicted on others is now felt by them. Part of the process of self-assessment is a rerun of their past life, in every detail. The judges act as loving teachers helping the souls to realize that every experience promotes personal growth. Then the judges put forward views such as ‘In your next life it would be wise to be a farmer, to marry have a large family’ or ‘you must learn to work more closely with others.’”

Stage Three: Planning

“The souls put the recommendations of the judges to use in planning their next life. Some subjects plan their next life in incredible detail – they choose their parents, the city they will live in, the schools they’ll attend and the person they will wed. Sometimes the planning is done in consultation with other souls with whom bonds have been established over many lifetimes. Mothers and children, for example, attempt to work together to plan lives that will allow them another chance to be together. Some plan in a more general way – making an outline of what they hope to experience. Other people make no plans for their life ahead. Some want to experience an unplanned life, to test their growth and artistic capabilities. Still others are sad souls who don’t want to return to life but are catapulted into a life they don’t want.”

Stage Four: A last visit before the judges, who check on the souls’ readiness for the return to Earth.

“This is usually a formality. It appears to happen close to returning to Earth.”

Dr. Ian Stevenson

The work of Dr. Stevenson was detailed extensively in Article 230.

Dr. Stevenson was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School.

He interviewed young children who had spontaneously remembered apparent previous existences.

He spent over 30 years on this research – collecting and analyzing over 3000 cases from all over the world.

“Frequently their memories are so detailed Stevenson is able to track down the identity of their previous personality and verify virtually everything they have said. He has even taken children to the area in which their past incarnation lived, and watched as they navigated effortlessly through strange neighborhoods and correctly identified their former house, belongings, and past-life relatives and friends.”2

Dr. Stevenson agrees personal responsibility, not chance, is the arbiter of our fate.

The inner experiences of life matter more than the outer ones; that is the joys, sorrows, and ‘inner growths’ of the personality matter more than wealth and possessions.

He found a person’s previous incarnation can affect the shape and structure of their current physical body.

The prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association stated that [Dr. Stevenson] has “painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases in which the evidence for reincarnation is difficult to understand on any other grounds…He has placed on record a large amount of data that cannot be ignored.”

Dr. Jim Tucker

“Jim B. Tucker is a child psychiatrist and Bonner-Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. His main research interests are children who claim to remember previous lives, and natal and prenatal memories. He is the author of Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives, which presents an overview of over four decades of reincarnation research at the Division of Perceptual Studies. Tucker worked for several years on this research with Ian Stevenson before taking over upon Stevenson’s retirement in 2002.”3

Dr. Tucker is considered the worthy successor to Dr. Stevenson.

He continued Dr. Stevenson’s research and expanded on it, adding new cases.

He focuses on documentable evidence such as specific details verified from children’s memories.

He also looks at matching birthmarks. (Our new bodies often have visible birthmarks in areas where our alleged former selves were mortally wounded.)

He also uses facial recognition software to compare incarnations.

“Tucker suggests that quantum mechanics may offer a mechanism by which memories and emotions could carry over from one life to another. He argues that since the act of observation collapses wave equations, the self may not be merely a by-product of the brain, but rather a separate entity that impinges on matter. Tucker argues that viewing the self as a fundamental, nonmaterial part of the universe makes it possible to conceive of it continuing to exist after the death of the brain. He provides the analogy of a television and the television transmission; the television is required to decode the signal, but it does not create the signal. In a similar way, the brain may be required for awareness to express itself, but may not be the source of awareness.”4

Dr. Helen Wambach

Dr. Wambach is a late San-Francisco based psychologist who conducted a study about reincarnation in the 1960s.

She began as a skeptic, not believing in reincarnation and attempted to address its flaws. By the end of her ten year analysis she was quoted as saying, “I don’t believe in reincarnation – I know it!”

Dr. Wambach hypnotized a total of 1088 people; regressed them to different time periods and asked them specific questions about their gender, social status, race, clothing style, footwear, tools used, occupation, money, housing, food, utensils used in eating, and so on.

She found that over 90 percent of her subjects recalled past lives as peasants, laborers, farmers and primitive food gatherers.

Less than 10% remembered lives as aristocrats; and none remembered being famous.

These findings argue against the notion that past-life memories are fantasies.

“The reported class or status was exactly the same proportion as the estimates of historians of the specific period of the former life…The recall of subjects of clothing, footwear, type of food and utensils used was better than in popular history books…Among the subjects, 62% died of old age and illness, 18% died violently during war, or some other manmade catastrophe and the remaining 20% died in accidents. Many of the prior lives ended during the two world wars, as well as civil wars in Asian countries…Surprisingly, Dr. Wambach found that 69% of the subjects who had died during the 1850’s were Caucasians, while between 1900 and 1945, only 40% were Caucasian. It seems that transmigration of the different races increased after 1945.”5

With the exception of 11 subjects, all descriptions of clothing, footwear and utensils were consistent with historical records.

Dr. Wambach published two books with her findings entitled, Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence Under Hypnosis and Life Before Life published in 1984.

Edgar Cayce (1877-1945)

Edgar Cayce was an American Christian mystic and psychic who answered questions on subjects such as healing, reincarnation, wars, Atlantis, and future events while in trance.

Cayce did not believe in reincarnation as it was not an accepted part of official Christian doctrine, yet his readings, again and again, emphasized the truth of reincarnation. He agonized over this in his life until his beliefs finally gave way, unable to deny the truth of reincarnation any longer.

He was able to give extensive, detailed information about his client’s lives, health and past lives. Cayce gave a total of around 22,000 individual readings. A total of 14,306 are available at the A.R.E. Cayce headquarters in Virginia Beach.

Many of these cases are documented and analyzed in Gina Cerminara’s book Many Mansions.

Cerminara discusses many examples of past-life karma in her book.

As David Wilcock writes in The Synchronicity Key, “Through a series of specific examples, the Cayce readings shed a great deal of light on the reason and necessity for reincarnation. It quickly becomes clear that our actions do have consequences, and when we are sufficiently unloving toward someone, we may not be ready to experience similarly painful events in our own lives until a later incarnation. Our soul may not administer the strongest forms of karma until it feels we are mature enough, on a spiritual level, to avoid becoming even more negative from having had that experience.”6

Some of these examples include:

A college professor born blind in one eye was told that in a Persian lifetime around 1000 BC he was part of a barbaric tribe that blinded its enemies with red-hot irons, and his job was to do the blinding.
A 40-year old woman had strange and severe allergies to bread, cereal grains, shoe leather, the plastic rim of glasses, and other things. Cayce told her she had been a chemist that created chemicals that caused people to painfully itch; that could be blown in their face to poison them; and other poisons that could torture and kill people.
A young, very weak boy with anemia had been a brutal dictator in Peru and had shed much blood in order to establish his dictatorship.
Another man had debilitating asthma who had asphyxiated people to death in a past life.
Another person who was 100% deaf had refused to listen to others during the French Revolution and had cost them their lives.
Several people with severe disabilities were involved in mocking people with disabilities who were torn to death by animals during Roman times.
One very overweight woman had been a beautiful Roman athlete and routinely mocked overweight people.
Another 11-year old boy could not stop wetting the bed. He had been a “stool-dipper” in Puritan times – punishing people suspected of witchcraft by repeatedly ducking them underwater while strapped to a stool. These tortures usually led to drowning.
In one case, an extremely prejudiced white supremacist had been imprisoned, tortured and beaten to death by black soldiers in another lifetime.
An anti-Semitic newspaper columnist had been a Samaritan in Palestine in which she was frequently and violently attacked by her Jewish neighbors.
Another 38-year old woman could not trust men on a very deep level. She had been deserted by her husband during the Crusades.
One woman with exceptional tolerance for other religions had been a Crusader among Islamic peoples and found they were kind, merciful, courageous and idealistic.
Another person who distrusted all religions had been in the Crusades as well and was disgusted by the hypocrisy he saw between people’s religious ideals and their actions.

“Cerminara therefore concludes that one significant aspect of karma is a psychological holdover of the guilt and shame we feel from actions performed in other lifetimes. The Cayce readings often said that karma is a function of memory, and the key to breaking this cycle is to forgive ourselves for what we may have done to others in the past [and what others may have done to us]. ‘In forgiveness lies the stoppage of the wheel of karma.’”7

We must learn to transform our grudges, bitterness and hatreds into understanding, empathy and compassion. The only way to do this is through forgiveness – forgiveness of ourselves and forgiveness of all others.

Forgiveness does not mean that you are saying it is OK to commit negative acts. It does not give the perpetrators a ‘free pass’. Forgiveness allows you to stop being the victim to past abuses and to stop victimizing others for grudges, bitterness, shame and guilt that you hold within yourself. It severs the attachment so the perpetrator can no longer live through their victim. If you can forgive another, you can set yourself free.

Forgiveness is not easy. If it was easy it would not be so powerful…so utterly life-changing. To learn to forgive is the greatest challenge a human can undertake.

It is the only way to stop circling the drain of violence, hatred, war, pain, bigotry, elitism and suffering and to move forward into a new world where peace, joy, and prosperity reign for all.

As Cayce once said, “Know this: that whatever situation you find yourself in, it is what is necessary for your development. An entity must apply in its associations from day to day a word here and a word there, one today, another tomorrow and the next day, with the understanding that from such activities in word and deed, self-development will come.

Little by little, brick upon brick, is the structure built. By words of mouth, by little acts day by day, an individual gives expression to its discernment and builds surely towards a complete expression of its knowledge, of its latent abilities, and of its true purpose. When an entity has prepared itself through constant forward movement towards service, the necessary circumstances for change will come about so that he may see the next step, the next opportunity.

Build then, with that in hand, little by little, line upon line.”